The older I get, the deeper I fall in awe of memory. Why, as I walk to grab oranges at the market, do I think of my grandma singing ‘Knock Three Times’? On a run, I remember a boy who did coke and then kissed me, remarking with delighted eyes that my lips tasted like coke. I chuckle, and I marvel at having met him only once, years ago. Is it strange to remember this silly intimacy? What, if anything, does he remember of me?

I hoard stories. I relive them with every re-telling, examining the edges and finding new meaning. I play the same video games over and over, immersing in those worlds. Songs attach themselves to chapters of my life. I healed from my first breakup listening to Blank Space on YouTube over and over, running circles around Worthen Arena in Muncie, Indiana, the parking lot stale with snow.

An old lover told me I was the biggest devotee to lore he’d ever met. I remember feeling suddenly naked. He was right. I delight in the lore of everything. I am, in ways, always crafting my own.

What will I think of these days, once they’re gone? Who will I ache to see again? What stories will I tell, over and over, and who will populate them?

Valentino arrives at the apartment and the inspection begins. It’s December 30, the night before New Year’s Eve, and we’ve agreed to dog-watch. Fluffy and remarkably nimble, Tino might seem young at first glance. A closer look, however, reveals that time has poured milk across his eyes. As he sniffs out the boundaries of his newfound quarters, he makes a series of gentle collisions:

Bump. Terse exhale. Continue. 

We go about clearing obstacles and setting up comforts. Tino’s bed and feeding bowls are nestled together in the bedroom, and Josh brings him here repeatedly for orientation. He is determined, however, to explore.

When I go to pet him, brushing a gentle palm across his forehead, he catches a whiff of a stranger and barks a scrappy defense. I concede.

My cat, however, is far less willing to capitulate to Tino’s demands. As Tino explores the apartment, he is unwittingly stalked by a fascinated tabby, pupils wide and unblinking in the watching. Occasionally, the blind dog changes course unexpectedly, and August acrobatically escapes to some higher ground. We watch this, laughter rolling into the apartment.

Before Josh goes to work, he takes Tino for a walk and then shuts him in the bedroom. He asks me to ensure the cat and dog are kept separate for the time being, and I agree. Later, I decide to head to the gym, and I step gingerly into the bedroom. Valentino hears me, barreling immediately into motion, and, in a panic, I roll onto the bed and freeze. The next three minutes are quiet, the dog curiously sniffing the air and the grown man watching with a mischievous grin.

Valentino doesn’t have much time left. Dogs are a strange and miraculous gift, so very alive and attuned to the worlds of humans, but also markedly finite. We cannot make him young again, but we can build these days around ensuring he is cozy and cared for.

And his is not a life without stories, even now. In the course of a few days, he has infuriated the cat by finding and finishing his food, he has held me hostage in my own bedroom, and he has made us cackle in laughter.

Time is relentless in its turning of pages, no matter how much we ache to slow it, but it also permits us the chance to scribble down what we might one day hope to remember.

–

I adore New Year’s Day.

By this, I don’t really mean to say I adore New Year’s Eve. In my experience, the last night of the calendar year usually amounts to a messy blend of social pressure, the ticking of the clock, and communal celebration. I’ve shouted ‘Happy New Year’ alongside best friends and lovers, but strange characters always somehow factor into the experience. On the lucky years, the blur is more joyful than rushed.

New Year’s Day, however, always strikes me with the blinking softness of a blank page. Walking on the sidewalk, riding the train, I can feel it from everyone. It’s written, plain as day, on their faces. Everyone is lost in thought: reflecting on the past year, wondering about the future, and thinking about how to start writing.

I love the clumsiness of first sentences. A blank page means anything is possible, but the first sentence sets a story in motion. New Year’s Day feels fresh, feels possible, feels tender, feels hopeful, feels imaginative. Perhaps this will be the year we break better. Perhaps these will be the days our hands figure out how to strum that melody we’ve been humming.

–

2024 was the year I learned to exhale and let go. 

I began the year with a scrappy sense of resolve: I would hit 2024 with a sprinting start, hitting the gym each day and chasing my wildest joy. In the first week of the year, however, I watched someone I adore crumble into crisis. Days later, I took a nasty spill on an evening run, cracking my phone screen and rolling my ankle.

When I noticed my lower back tightening up, I tried to push it through exercise. I spent the rest of the week lying on my living room floor, passing the hours watching sitcoms and calling whoever had time to listen. I came into 2024 with ferocious intentions, but, in these hours, I reached a new resolution: This would be the year of gentleness. 

I started a morning yoga practice and worked to commune with my body as it healed. When I recovered enough to run, to lift weights at the gym, I did these things with gratitude and without brutality. Perhaps a more honest strength lies in gentleness.

For 2025, I resolve only to go gentler. I will wander where my soul can find rest, and I will commune with people around whom my guard unravels. I will write – poetry, stories, love letters, eulogies, forewords – and I will scribble my initials on every draft.

Today, I only want the world
from the window, the
indifference of sunlight, I
am a bundle of raw nerves,
a shaking breath, weighed
down not by my griefs,
but my hope, a fresh-cut
flower of stubborn root,
wincing and reeling deep
beneath my sternum.

Already, I can feel it
trying to flower, my
weary frame twisted in
blankets on the couch, writing
love letters to people who
won’t leave me to tend my
own wounds, my hands reach
to make a soft landing,
sowing hope, forming
chosen family through broken heart.

There is God in the brown-bag
bagels we split for lunch, God
in the soothing familiarity of
favorite stories, God in an
orange tabby dropping a rose
at my side, purring, and
the False God, held
before me, shudders at
hopes like these, quakes in the
face of real power.

Grief pulls us to the ground, and
hope’s frayed edges know these
to be the seasons to burrow,
to strengthen, to build, to
nurture, shedding counterfeit
community for something sturdier,
to fight, to resist, to keep going.

Yellow bleeds into the leaves
outside my window, I wonder
do they feel themselves die, try
to spot the green giving way,
ponder the consciousness of
trees, imagine the branches
staring back in, whispering,
he’s looking so much stronger
these days, down to the roots.

You never touched my November,
let’s give thanks to that, nothing
to rinse loose amidst these
new early nights, playlists
shift from electropop wanting
to the soft acoustic strumming,
rest and romance and reveling,
poetry in everything, pressing
meaning into every minute
of the dissipating daylight.

Imagining the future is
a love language, as is
making a meal and
presenting it on the couch,
watch with wide eyes at
the first bite, we should
catch a show or
bike to the brewery before
it gets too cold, we should
go, but let’s stay, is a
language, planting roses
on the eve of some November.

Night is falling sooner, I
just can’t catch my breath,
hold a friend close and
promise each other it’ll
be all right, these weary
hearts, these traveled
feet, my wristwatch counts
the steps, and I am
always on some long walk
somewhere, finding beauty
in all the great unknowns.

Money is a magic rope, pulling
tighter around the ribcage
the more you move, but
maybe it’ll be okay, split
a homemade meal and
escape into a story,
try and remember when
the breathing came easy.

MAGA hat, proud display, I don’t care
that you’re scared but don’t let
it divide us, red-faced
rhetoric, poisoned softness,
don’t meet your heroes, kid.

I bump into an old boyfriend’s
dick on the Internet, and,
I break into laughter, surprising
myself and alarming my cat,
time melting a wound down
to a punchline, after all.

Late night poetry club,
grief and gratitude right in the
midst of a hundred unknowns,
nurturing hope, scavenging
hope, purchasing hope on
layaway, in the stanzas,
pleasant wanderings home,
lamplight verses.

In a dream, under violet
light, you appear and, for once,
we know each other, you ask
will you stay with me this time,
and

Waking is akin to a dredging,
my lungs are fire, ravenous air,
wet palms against the spinning earth,
why does my mind still invent you,
does my subconscious heart
still ache, awake, at the thought
of your ghostly loneliness?

My limbs hang heavy through
morning routines, hot water
to the bone, but some
indigoes won’t rinse loose,
your memory a bright pink
sore in the gums, and my mind
a tongue runneth over:
where are you today, and
do I haunt you this way,
and was any of it real, and
is it better if it was?

I lug my cat’s tower toward
the window, bedroom and living room,
back and forth, because he
revels in this kind of change, the
same world through new eyes, and I
revel in his reveling, motor engine purrs
and paw swipes against my passing arm.

Outside, the world changes once more,
right on schedule, and I marvel at the
passage of time, bike across the Pulaski
to clink beers with my friend, talking
boys and botox, and the sun
sets too soon on our afternoon,
telltale sign of a chapter well lived,
always too few pages
for the stories we love.

Fruity Pebbles after sex, this is
luxury, spoon clink smiles
and stealing just a few more minutes
from the indigo blanket of sleep
to show each other something stupid
on our phones, the days piling up
into storied stacks on the shelves.

Love looks like a text message
ten minutes after your friend leaves
three heart-eyed emojis
and you both know it means
what a night,
what a thing to have a friend.

Love looks like a son
camped out in the waiting room
waiting on the woman
who has always steadied him,
whispering promises she can lean
on him, he will be steady,
even with shaking hands.

Love looks like an outstretched
hand, there is healing, wounds
will mend, there can
be f l o u r i s h i n g,
stronger in the snaps than
ever imagined before.

For better, for worse, I will remember
in vivid detail, the way you pulled back
from kissing me to marvel, ‘that smile,’
and the small affection of your foot
against my leg as you slept, as
though we were otters, and
no current could part us if you
just kept contact.

I will pack up the apartment, and
among the strange and hollow walls, I
will sing in detail about the night
we clinked margaritas in a hotel bar,
dreamers in cahoots, and I
will remember us this way, forever,
finders, keepers.

That restaurant in Chelsea is the
one where we kissed before biking
to the ice cream shop, next to the
place where you yelled at me
until I cried, and I asked you, why
do I have to cry before you stop
yelling?

All the stories will come with me,
boxes sagging under the weight of
a hundred lives lived, loves like
petals pressed into pages, no
longer living but vibrant reminders,
I will remember it all, the lessons
like broken skin and discoveries
blood rush madness, and I’ll
tell them like a man who
has mastered the mundane
art of time travel.

More than once, it’s happened:
I tell someone I have a cat, and they’ve told me,
You know, if you die in your apartment,
your cat will eat your face?

And, what an image, I’ve mused, what
a curious share!

What is it, I wonder, that causes
someone to want me to know
some small love in my life is imagined,
or makes them comfortable
painting a picture of me dying,
alone and unsupervised, my cat’s
pink nose sniffing my figure
writhing on the tile?

And, listen, it usually seems to
boil down to something un-malicious –
some passionate, misguided argument
on behalf of the dog, who would
certainly not eat my face, very
unlike the orange cat purring
on my chest while I answer all
my morning emails.